We mostly use Python for machine learning/data science projects, specifically with spaCy and NLP. But I don’t think it is a terrible language, IMHO.

I never liked Python’s significant whitespace and the passing of self to nearly every function. So I switched to Ruby a long time ago — which I think is the perfect scripting language that also goes a long way beyond.

I also think a developer needs to learn at least one SERIOUS programming language like Rust, Go, Elixir, or Clojure (the latter two being my personal favorites).

Unfortunately Python still is the go-to to when it comes to data science, math, and ML — due to a proliferation of mature numeric libraries.

Python is not that bad once you know its limitations. It excels as a quick and dirty language for exploratory programming. I code daily in Python and C++ and typically what takes a few days of C++ programming and testing can be done in less than one day in Python. Than, once the the design is frozen one can port the slow Python code to performant C++.